While students anticipate the lazy days of summer, many local Catholic school principals and their newly-formed marketing teams are gearing up for a busy "off-season" spreading the good news about parochial schools in hopes of boosting enrollment and building community.

And, with L.A. Unified School District's recent announcement that summer school programs have been cut way back, some principals at Catholic schools are hoping their campus summer programs will attract public school students who may decide to enroll as full-time students in September.

A surge of public school students during the summer "would be a happy problem," said Barbara Barreda, principal at St. Elizabeth School in Van Nuys, where summer classes begin June 29. She is currently in the process of circulating St. Elizabeth summer school flyers to local public elementary schools.

Following a recommendation made at a marketing and training seminar conducted by members of Bishop Alemany High School's outreach team March 21, Barreda and representatives of her 12-member marketing team will visit the 20 preschools that surround St. Elizabeth School. Also, one school parent has volunteered to visit preschool home care providers registered on the Child Care Resource Center list.

"We're trying to build a relationship with local preschools," said Barreda. Last summer, school representatives visited a few preschools, but, since the March marketing meeting, "we're doing it in a more organized, deliberate way," she noted.

St. Elizabeth parish has already begun implementing another marketing idea suggested by Bishop Alemany's outreach team: a Birthday Club for parish elementary school-aged children. Children were registered after Masses the first weekend in May and another weekend registration will take place in June.

The purpose of the Birthday Club is to identify every parish child ages 1-13 and record their family's biographical information into an Excel database in order to target prospective students for school enrollment by direct mail and personal contact. Children will receive a birthday card and a small gift, with a special present of a parish school t-shirt for pre-kindergarten four-year-olds.

"The whole idea of building and managing a database was very useful," said Barreda. Her Birthday Club committee has organized their database by the ages of the children, allowing list managers to identify and communicate with families making important school enrollment decisions for their children --- especially kindergartners and junior high students who are transitioning out of other schools.

In Northridge, Our Lady of Lourdes principal Patricia Hager plans on creating a database this summer of parish religious education students enabling her to raise the parish school profile by sending out congratulatory baptismal cards and invitations to school events.

She also intends to create an "alum" database to maintain contact with former students who may be inspired to volunteer their time or contribute financially. Alumni will receive postcards in the next few months about a reunion event just for them in early October before the annual parish festival.

"We have implemented everything" recommended by Alemany's outreach team, said Hager, who recently joined the local Chamber of Commerce to raise the school's visibility in the community. She has also visited local preschools, informing families about Catholic elementary schools in their neighborhoods.

Getting on board with this generation's preference for new communication technology, Hager bought a digital video album which is displayed near the school office advising school families of current and upcoming events. She notes with some pride that on the first day the school's recently-created Facebook page went up, the site was visited by 168 alumni.

Since she attended the March marketing meeting, Roberta Fox, principal of St. Catherine of Siena School in Reseda, has met three times with the school's new marketing committee. The committee plans on implementing an elementary school children's Birthday Club, and will continue putting school information in the parish bulletin throughout the summer.

In efforts to enroll kindergartners currently attending the parish preschool for the 2009-2010 school year, St. Catherine's kindergarten teacher met with all the parents with the result that the majority of the Pre-K graduates will attend the parish kindergarten. At the March marketing meeting, presenters stressed the importance of parish/school staff and parent volunteer outreach to the community in order to develop new markets of potential students.

"What Alemany High School has done is package a marketing program, and they have been generous in sharing it with the schools for the benefit of everybody in the Valley. I think it will make a difference in everyone's enrollment," said Fox.

"I would recommend it for every region in the archdiocese," added Hager.

According to Mary Blair, principal at St. Euphrasia in Granada Hills, the March marketing meeting offered valuable information on how to conduct and customize campus tours for prospective school families and community leaders. The school now has volunteer parent campus guides conducting regularly scheduled tours, including an upcoming tour for local real estate agents on June 16.

St. Euphrasia summer marketing plans include setting up alumni and Birthday Club databases, adding features to the school's website, and continuing to post school news during the summer in the parish bulletin. Parishioners will also receive a letter from the pastor in the next couple of weeks encouraging alumni school families to keep in touch with their alma mater.

Outreach training
Frank Ferry, Bishop Alemany High School's principal, said impetus for the marketing and outreach training March seminar started about two years ago after surveys of their 40 elementary feeder schools showed that declining enrollment was an ongoing problem.

"It was clear that if something wasn't done, the source of Catholic kids for Catholic high school was diminishing to the point where elementary schools were closing down," said Ferry.

Rather than accept a situation where six Catholic high schools in the San Fernando Valley were competing for a shrinking pool of Catholic students, Ferry and the three full-time members of his outreach team launched an effort to increase the enrollment of Catholic elementary schools. The effort utilized the target marketing methods that have taken Alemany's student body from 1,125 to 1,590 students in three years.

"It's really clear," Ferry told San Fernando Region Auxiliary Bishop Gerald Wilkerson, "that with some unified, collaborative effort, we could build enrollment similar to Alemany if we just go out and target who the new kindergarten kids are and how we market ourselves versus a charter, magnet or public school."

Interest among area pastors and principals grew after Ferry gave an enrollment-building workshop at a local deanery meeting. When school administrators started asking the Alemany outreach team for specific help with their marketing efforts, plans for the March 21 all-day marketing session took shape.

About 200 people, including pastors, principals, faculty, staff and school parents, attended the day-long event which drew representatives from a large majority of parishes in the four San Fernando Region deaneries, as well as from the Santa Barbara, San Gabriel and Our Lady of the Angels Regions.

Participants could select from several workshops, such as "Developing New Markets," "Branding," "Telling Your Story: The Use of Earned Media," and "How to Build a Database" by implementing the parish elementary school Birthday Club. Building a database is crucial to successful target marketing, since approximately two-thirds of parishioners never register at the parish, Ferry noted.

Alemany, which builds lists of potential students over the course of years from the time junior high students may take an on-campus retreat or attend open house, keeps in touch with "good news" postcards about the students' academic, sports and artistic accomplishments.

"Any time we do something well, we [promote it] by sending a postcard announcement" to names on the database, said Ferry. Even for those students currently attending public school, he explained, "if you keep contacting them, they have an option" to consider if they're not happy in their neighborhood school.